Chapter 72

Alessandro

There are memories you bury so deep, with the emotions you felt in that event and the person you were, so much so you almost believe they never happened—just until something shakes them loose, and like ghosts, they resurrect from the shadows you had them hidden.

A name, a scent, the faintest echo of a voice, or even a text.

T.C.

Tio Carlo.

This morning, when the message came, when those two letters lit up my screen in their usual, unassuming font, T.C., I swear the past slammed into me so hard, I nearly dropped the phone. I could hardly breathe, as though my lungs forgot the procedure to keep me alive, and my heart began to thump so loud, and right there in Isabella’s room—still dipped in her scent, still wrapped in her sheets—it all shattered.

The warmth, the ache, the longing, all of it drowned beneath the rising flood of a memory I thought I had left buried.

I hadn’t said it out loud in years, the name. I had trie